Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

worksinprogress.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 511 posts

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#211

Post by amelius »

_ph_ wrote: post #208
biomcgary wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diamond eyeglasses? The lenses would still be cheaper than the Luxottica frames.

I am pretty sure, diamonds would make awful eyeglasses. While their index of refraction is high, which makes glasses thin, their chromatic dispersion is high. That is the very thing which makes their glitter so colorful. For good optical systems you want to try to reduce the dispersion, to 0, if possible. Another story is the scratch-resistance. For that it would be sufficient to coat the surface of the lens with a t…

Maybe we can have diamond-based scratch protection on smartphones?

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#212

Post by db48x »

jayd16 wrote: post #210
Terr_ wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the whole aerostat thing where you make a diamond "balloon" full of vacuum that floats in air, using the strength of the rigid diamond to avoid it being crushed and popped. I'm no materials-scientist, but I did some napkin-math on that once and it came out to some ridiculously-thin-sounding layer of diamond.

so I guess it needs to be like 1/4th the thickness of the latex in a balloon (diamond is 4x the density). Vacuum gives you a bit more lift than helium but not that much. Yeah, seems pretty thin.

Yea, a bit of artistic license on the author’s part. You could make things quite light though.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#213

Post by HPsquared »

Terr_ wrote: post #182
db48x wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not quite. They were making diamond windows from atmospheric carbon dioxide at room temperature in household machines or machines you could rent at the post office. We’re a ways off from that yet.

Also the whole aerostat thing where you make a diamond "balloon" full of vacuum that floats in air, using the strength of the rigid diamond to avoid it being crushed and popped. I'm no materials-scientist, but I did some napkin-math on that once and it came out to some ridiculously-thin-sounding layer of diamond.

Buckling would be a problem.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#214

Post by Smaug123 »

slt2021 wrote: post #173
asdff wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The realities of this market have not hit the consumers. Even young people are still out there spending 5-6 figures on a rock and ascribing real value and aspirations towards eventually "upgrading" into said rocks from perhaps an existing synthetic alternative already set in the ring. Even if the supply side price argument is so perverted now, we still have a culture that wants to put a high value on this object for…

>> They want to spend money on it. no guy ever wants to shell out $$$ for a useless rock

It's not useless as such, although certainly its use is exceedingly niche. My headcanon is that Cecil Rhodes saw something back in the 1880s, something which drove him to create a corporate engine which would continue to bend the culture centuries after his own death. Now, a hundred and fifty years later, an appreciable fraction of the population carries with them at all times an object capable of scratching everything. What he saw, I cannot say, but one day in our hour of need the population will be equipped.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#215

Post by nsteel »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #124
Animats wrote: post #105

That's a good article. The whole history is there. The commercial side has made huge progress, too. Look up "diamond making machine" on Alibaba. You can buy a high-pressure, high temperature six sided press for about US$200,000. A chemical vapor deposition machine is about the same price. De Beers, the diamond cartel, has an R&D operation, Element Six. They sell synthetic diamonds for lasers and other exotic applicat…

This is certainly good news for lasers. Many people don't realize how good diamonds are for this. Transparent with a 65% higher refractive index than glass, and 8x the thermal conductivity of copper. And completely scratch-proof!

Why are they not more popular as a material for heatsinks? Especially with those that like decorating the inside of the PC with fairy lights.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#216

Post by slt2021 »

Smaug123 wrote: post #214
slt2021 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> They want to spend money on it. no guy ever wants to shell out $$$ for a useless rock

It's not useless as such, although certainly its use is exceedingly niche. My headcanon is that Cecil Rhodes saw something back in the 1880s, something which drove him to create a corporate engine which would continue to bend the culture centuries after his own death. Now, a hundred and fifty years later, an appreciable fraction of the population carries with them at all times an object capable of scratching everythi…

bitcoin is the 21 century's diamond. Same useless string of cryptographically signed bytes, but for some reason the humanity agrees to assign some value just because of scarcity mindset.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#217

Post by bitmasher9 »

nsteel wrote: post #215
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is certainly good news for lasers. Many people don't realize how good diamonds are for this. Transparent with a 65% higher refractive index than glass, and 8x the thermal conductivity of copper. And completely scratch-proof!

Why are they not more popular as a material for heatsinks? Especially with those that like decorating the inside of the PC with fairy lights.

It’s still prohibitively expensive for such applications.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#218

Post by rodgerd »

bluGill wrote: post #164
Joker_vD wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I expect diamonds to lose almost all of their value. Artificial diamonds, you mean. The natural ones will keep their price, just as "hand-crafted" goods did (and, I suspect, as "human-produced" content in the future will); it's a matter of status and signalling that you can afford to buy an inferior, more expensive product.

Given the moral conditions around natural diamonds it is artificial diamonds that should command a premium.

Basically you're paying extra money for the murdering at this point.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#219

Post by callalex »

amelius wrote: post #211
_ph_ wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure, diamonds would make awful eyeglasses. While their index of refraction is high, which makes glasses thin, their chromatic dispersion is high. That is the very thing which makes their glitter so colorful. For good optical systems you want to try to reduce the dispersion, to 0, if possible. Another story is the scratch-resistance. For that it would be sufficient to coat the surface of the lens with a t…

Maybe we can have diamond-based scratch protection on smartphones?

I wonder if the process would be cheaper than the current high end (smart)watch and lens practice of sapphire coating?

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#220

Post by modderation »

cma wrote: post #179
thehappypm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diamonds certainly have value as a material for jewelry -- essentially unscratchable jewelry is pretty awesome. They also don't get cloudy over time or anything. That's the cool part.

They can be burned up in a house fire though.

Who needs a house fire? A bit of quartz glass, a blow torch, and an oxygen supply, and you can convert your unused diamonds into carbon dioxide without losing the house*

Nile Red uses this approach to make Diamond Water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0wvDwSnzcw

* You might still lose the house if you opt for the bigger diamonds.

Post reply on HN